Films

Opening Night Film

Lebanon | 92mins | 2016 | Dir: Sophie Boutros

A romantic comedy about love and marriage amongst our Arab neighbours…. and enemies. It’s been more than 20 years since the Lebanese-Syrian war, yet Therese is still not over the death of her brother, killed by a Syrian bomb. Today her only daughter is getting engaged. Only when the suitor and his parents are at her doorstep, she discovers they are Syrian.

After a white lie which spirals out of control, a neurotic, naïve and musically gifted Muslim cleric’s eldest son must follow through with an arranged marriage, except he is madly in love with an Australian born Lebanese girl.

A documentary about the real business of domestic workers in Lebanon. Workers are classified per their nationality and ethnicity and their wages vary depending on their classification. In this complex industry, the relationship is quite simple: the Lebanese employer is the master and the domestic worker is a commodity. Zein owns an agency that recruits and supplies domestic workers in Beirut. He arranges for Asian and African women to work in Lebanese households and assists his clients to choose mail-order workers that suit their needs. With the justice, police and marketing systems on his side, Zein decides to open his agency to us.

Starring Hiam Abbas this tragi-comedy about nine very different women, varying ages and backgrounds that gather at the local Hammam - mingling and at times confronting one another, lashing out, raging, crying, fighting and seeking comfort in each other. Outside the hammam, fury is in the air. Something is brewing among the men. The women take aim, they are ready to deal with what is to come.

This heartfelt documentary takes us into the world of the Gaza Strip's surfing enthusiasts and reveals a formidable resilience pulsing within a beleaguered population  locked in between Egypt and Israel. The youth are constantly weary of the daily state of emergency, yet they seek and find meaning and perspective to their lives through surfing on the beaches of Gaza.

Ali falls in love with a goat, whom he names Nada. Ibrahim works at a recording studio and starts to hear voices that frighten him. Ali yields to his mothers wish that he visit a healer, even though he doesnt believe he is psychologically unstable. At the healers clinic, Ali meets Ibrahim. The healer diagnoses Ali and Ibrahim as cursed and prescribes a solution to break the spell; they must throw three magic stones in Egypts three water bodies. Ali, Ibrahim and Nada set off on an adventure that takes them to the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Nile in this touching tale of friendship, reconciliation, self-discovery and self-acceptance.

A school teacher has to gain his young son's confidence and admiration through an act of violence. Set in Aqaba, Jordan, this short film is an Arabic-language adaptation of Raymond Carver's, Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes.

Baba Azizi is an old man, who has not been spared by illness. Passed around by his adult children, he finds himself at his daughters house for a couple of days. An ordeal is expected, but things will not go as he imagines.